The four-game World Series sweep by the San Francisco Giants provided little in the way of drama, but there was some intriguing off-field news coming out of the Fall Classic. State Farm Insurance is out as a Major League Baseball corporate sponsor and title sponsor of the annual Home Run Derby, held the evening before the All-Star Game.

That means MLB heads into the offseason minus a sponsor of six years and with the pressure of having to sell one of its largest sponsorship packages: the ESPN-televised Home Run Derby, which State Farm had titled since 2007. Before that, Century 21 had a seven-year run.

The good news is that the broadcast is always one of the highest cable ratings of the summer—a time when it is difficult to achieve any kind of ratings success. This year’s Home Run Derby posted a 4.1 rating and 6.9 million viewers on ESPN, up slightly from the prior year’s event.

The bad news for those selling a package that one agency source pegged at an “asking price” of $10 million a year is that both the All-Star Game, to which the Derby is inevitably tied, and the World Series registered historic lows in terms of ratings and total viewers on Fox. We realize the need for perspective here, so let’s add that the audience for the July 10 All-Star Game still allowed Fox to win the night, and that the four-game average World Series numbers of a 7.6 rating and 12.7 million viewers was the most-watched programming for Fox since its May “American Idol” finale.

Still, there is more distressing news for those selling MLB rights. While sponsorship buys are infamously difficult to compare head to head, State Farm already has voted with its pocketbook, renewing with the NBA for an additional four years while dropping its MLB rights. Multiple sources tell us the insurer will keep its MLB team deals while spending more on the NBA, which offers a younger audience.

“They are doubling down on the NBA,” said a senior marketer familiar with the negotiations.

Under its NBA renewal, State Farm, a league sponsor since 2010, will take an ownership position of the NBA draft, continue as presenting sponsor of TNT’s Thursday night NBA package and All-Star Saturday night sponsorship, along with a raft of new social media initiatives.

Offered another involved marketer: “State Farm’s sports spend isn’t dropping at all; in fact, it may be going up. They got a lot out of MLB and the Home Run Derby, but you can make a good case that it has run its course for them. And the MLB Advanced Media exclusivity the deal started with had lapsed, so the value was diminished.”

Given the arms war as far as marketing spend by insurance brands, MLB will continue to mine that category for another Home Run Derby sponsor.

Terry Lefton is an editor-at-large for SportsBusiness Journal, a sister publication of Sporting News.